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This is a genre I like and usually I play this kind of games in their flash/java online version but there are some nice Tower Defense games that can be downloaded and installed on Linux systems, today I’ll present you 3 of my favorites: Creeptd, Target Defense and Revenge of the Titans

But first a small introduction to what’s a Tower defense game:

The goal of tower defense games is to try to stop enemies from crossing a map by building towers which shoot at them as they pass. Enemies and towers usually have varied abilities, costs, and ability costs. When an enemy is defeated, the player earns money or points, which are used to buy or upgrade towers, or upgrade the number of money or points that are earned, or even upgrade the rate at which they upgrade.

CreepTD is an Online Multiplayer Tower Defense game for 1-4 players playing on one map. At the beginning you get 200 credits, 20 lives to defend and an income per round of 200 credits.The goal of the game is, of course, to survive your opponents. To do so, you need to build and later upgrade different kinds of towers to defend your lives against incoming creeps. If you don’t and a creep passes through your board completely, you lose a life. On the other hand you have to send different kinds of creeps to your opponents, so that they will lose their life. When sending creeps, your income per round (one round lasts 15 seconds) raises. With this in mind, the best strategy is based on building as few towers as required to survive the enemy wave and sending as much creeps as possible.

The more money you have, the more advanced towers can be built and the more advanced creeps are available to send. Sounds simple, but believe me, it’s all about the right strategy somewhere between defending and attacking to win the game!
When attacking you gain an advantage by good timing and selecting the most dangerous creep types depending on your opponents’ defense setting. Sometimes it may be the right decision to send a wave of smaller creeps and another time there will be a big creep required to put your opponents under pressure.

CreepTD can be played in single as well as multiplayer against other players in the following modes on more than 100 maps.

CreepTD modes:

All vs. All (2-4 players) Creeps are sent to every opponent. If a creep passes through a player’s game board completely, it appears again at the beginning of the same player’s game board. The last surviving player is the winner. If you are looking for a fair competitive multiplayer mode, this is the mode to play.

Send to random (3-4 players) Similar to “All vs. All”, but the player receiving a sent or transferred creep is randomly chosen. If you gain an advantage depends on which player is randomly chosen for each creep. The winner is the last surviving player.

2vs2 (4-players) Players 1 and 2 (top) play against players 3 and 4 (bottom). Creeps are sent to both opponents and if a creep passes through one’s game board completely, it will be transferred to the team mate’s game board. Winners are both team mates of the last surviving team.

2vs2 Coop (4-players) Similar to 2vs2 but both team mates share a common game board and have to combine their powers to win. Both team mates may build towers anywhere at their common board but each of them will control its own towers only. Winners are both team mates of the last surviving team.

Survivor (2-4 players) In survivor mode, creeps are sent by the AI that is therefore using a set of random strategies. Players are not able to send creeps but receive credits for each creep killed. There are no winners in Survivor mode but the last survivor will gain the most points and skill. Additionally every player’s maximum reached level will be saved to the highscores.

Survivor Coop (2-4 players) Survivor Coop mode is similar to Survivor mode with the exception that all players play on a common game board. Players are not able to send creeps on their own but receive credits for each creep killed. Every player controls only self-built towers. There are no winners in Survivor-Coop mode, it’s all about the level you reach through team play.

Installation

CreepTD is a Java based game, and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, the website suggest to use java 7, but the game works also with Java 6. To install the game on Linux you have 2 choice:

If you have Desura installed on your computer you can install it via Desura

To play the game an account is required, but registering a new one is matter of a couple of minutes, and once that you have a registered account you can see online the history of all your games with a wide range of statistics for each game played, also based on your results you’ll do experience points that are used to raise in level and skill points that is a measure of how much you are good in the game.

Pros:

– A lot of maps
– The multyplayer is really funny
– A lot of different modes
– Great community
– Low requirements, run on almost every PC.
– You can play it also on your browser.

Cons:

– In the start be ready to lose in the multiplayer.
– The graphic is minimalistic, in the first games this could confuse.
– Must be played online.

From the website http://www.targetdefense.com/ is possible to download not 1 but 3 Tower Defense games, all have in common a superb graphic, the 3 games are: Target Defense, Target defense 2 and Target Defense MX.

All 3 games focuses on vivid images and animations. You won’t believe it till you play it! There are also great soundtracks in mp3 format for more than 45 minutes of music in every game. Due to the immense amount of graphic display, Target Defense games requires that you have a 3d graphics card that is OPENGL compatible.

In the first 2 games there are a set of maps (more than 20) with an enter and an exit point, while in Target Defense MX you have to build a path with your towers for the enemy to reach the center of the map, where is located your core, if they reach it you’ll lose 1 lives out of 20.

Installation

All the 3 games are Java based, so you just have to download the archive from the website, unzip it and run the shell command (usually the name of the game) that you’ll find there.
I’ve tested them with Java 7 on Ubuntu 12.04 and everything worked without a problem.

Pros:

– A fair number of maps
– Really nice Graphics
– Good music
– A classic Tower Defense game.
– Can be played offline

They came out from outer space and without warning, unleashed an unprovoked worldwide assault upon the Earth. We developed defensive towers to defend ourselves from this threat we called The Titans, for no apparent reason! Oh wait, it’s because you find out that they’re coming from Titan!

Developed by Puppygames, Revenge of the Titans is a Tower Defense game which spans a full 50 mission campaign waged over four different planet locations, contains a resource management and a total of 40 different technologies and 29 buildings to research.

The look of the game is deliberately retro, but very well done and nice, I personally loved it.

The starting menu presents three distinct game modes to choose from: Campaign, Endless, and Survival. The first two show no difference except that in the campaign you’ll have funny characters who will provide you briefings between the various missions. As for the classic “Survival”, your goal will be to resist as much as possible to the enemy hordes in order to make a high score and enter in first place among players from around the world.

In a map rather than acquiring set towers after each level, you are instead brought to a buy screen, on which every single tower, power-up and upgrade is presented. You can then proceed to buy them in whichever order you choose, with certain purchases unlocking other areas of the shop.

What this means is that you can choose to tackle the game in whatever way you see fit. Buy up all the blasters and heavy-duty weaponry early on, and you can go for a more offensive stance against the aliens or keep the money to buy other things.

The money mechanic is handled quite well and is an enjoyable part of the game. During each mission you need to harvest crystals whilst protecting your base from the evil Titans. This is not an easy task and any money you have left after each mission gets added together with certain bonuses depending on your performance and that is carried on to your next mission.

The research is also fantastic, with so many different paths to choose from and this add a longer life to the game. Unfortunately, there’s also a dangerous flipside to this. Once you’ve chosen your weapons, there’s no way to go back other than to start all over again from the very beginning of the game.

Installation

The game cost around 20$ and can be bought directly from the official website, where you can download a package in .deb format or a generic archive in .tar.gz format.
There is also a Demo available, and if you like the description i suggest to try it before buying the game.

Pros:

– A funny Graphics
– A really good campaign mode with an interesting research tree
– Can be played multiple times testing different research

Cons:

– Only the Campaign mode seems interesting.
– Can be boring over time.